Bonney Moraines
Loop Brook Parking Lot
16km
1389m
After possible the worst start to the ski season, Kyle and I had low expectation's for our trip to Rogers Pass the weekend after New Years. We had been riding dirt on our bike trails up until the first week of December, and had just spent a week in Fernie over Christmas eating chocolate, watching Star Wars and lazing about. We had tried a few days of skiing, dodging rocks and dirt on the ski hill and cross country trails but after a particularly dismal day of ski touring we gave up on skiing altogether and embraced a Christmas Holiday of board games and naps. With minimal snow in the forecast, nobody wanted to join us in Rogers Pass (shocking). We were feeling sorry for ourselves and had missed the cancelation deadline on the hostel so decided to use the weekend to get some exercise and burn off those Christmas calories with a nice walk in the mountains.
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| Fresh snow in the parking lot |
We woke to some fresh snow in Golden which made the world look a bit more like winter. It got snowier on the way up to the pass but still looked like November conditions. We were not surprised when we were the second car in the Loop Brook Parking Lot but appreciated the broken trail up the drainage.
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| Up the brook |
It was sporty getting up the Elephants Trunk in such low snow and we had to pick our way carefully along the bank to get across the creek.
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| Elephant's Trunk |
Above the Elephant's Trunk, we took the climbers left skin track for a clockwise loop that works its way along the left side of the large patch of trees that marks the bottom of the moraines. We ended up a bit too high and lost some elevation as we came out onto eastern moraine that we used to access the slopes above.
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| Approaching the alpine and moraines |
The party that had broke trail was just transitioning at the top of the slope so we continued on to another moraine so we weren't all skiing the same line. The pitches off the moraines are quite short but it is easy to do a few laps once you have put the effort in to get up there (about 900m elevation). The clouds were in and out and visibility was limited as we dropped in for our first turns. To our surprise, it was about 40cms of deep blower pow!
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| Deep! |
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| Face shots! |
There had been evidence of storm slab avalanches on steep convexities that we were able to avoid by sticking to mellow slopes. Fortunately there are lots of options for mellow but enjoyable skiing off the moraines and with only 2 groups in the area we had lots of terrain to work with. With all the fresh snow it was hard to keep enough speed up to make turns, but when we did we were getting over the head face shots. It was amazing!
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| Heading up for lap 2 |
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| Kyle scopes out lines on Ross |
After 3 laps we started making our way back to the car, stoked about our awesome turns! Everybody loves a sneaky pow day.
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| Alder fest at treeline |
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| Route profile |
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